I could not be happier to see this rally in stocks all over the world. The Transportation stocks in particular have been especially impressive (See here: Transports 8/24/16). But I want to point to some of the rotation we’ve started to see in other asset classes since last week. [Read more…]

Every 2 weeks I sit down with the good folks at Benzinga to chat about the markets on their morning radio show. Today we discussed the rotation in stocks out of more interest rate sensitive sectors like Utilities and Staples and into things like Technology and Financials. This is all taking place as interest rates mean revert higher and bonds come off their highs. I think rates continue to spike and bonds are still a fade on any strength. We also go over Crude Oil, Apple and precious metals.

One of the most valuable tools we have as technicians is the ability to go through every single stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and every sector and sub-sector in the S&P500 so that we can weigh all of the evidence. It might take some time, but I promise you that there is no better way to gauge the strength or weakness in a market, than by going through them all. Since most people don’t have the time to do this work as regularly as I do, my annotations and notes can easily be referenced in the Chartbook.

Today I wanted to share some of my conclusions after running through all of the Dow Components and S&P Sectors on both weekly and daily timeframes. This analysis consists of over 120 charts and all of them have been updated today in the Chartbook. [Read more…]

The only thing that pays us in this market is price. That’s it. So what we try and do is use a handful of supplemental indicators to help us identify when a change in trend is about to occur. One of the more helpful tools we have to achieve this is momentum. We start to see momentum readings diverge from price, before price ultimately peaks in the coming days, weeks, or months; depending on the timeframe in question.

I personally choose a 14-period relative strength index (RSI) to gauge momentum across asset classes. You can read more about how I use RSI here. In this particular case, I want to focus on the obnoxious amount of bearish momentum divergences that we’re seeing in many of the most important indexes, sectors and stocks around the world. These “divergences” occur when prices make new highs, but momentum simultaneously makes a lower high. It’s a sign that a change in trend is approaching. Since we take a weight-of-the-evidence approach to markets, it’s not just that we’re seeing one or two of these sprinkled around. They’re showing up all over the place.

Utilities have been the monster in the U.S. Stock Market this year. While some sectors, like in the metals or energy space, have bounced back from horrific downtrends, others have kind of just muddled around, like Financials for example. Utilities, on the other hand, have been an absolute beast. They’ve been rallying since the beginning of the year and this month hit new all-time highs. Moving forward, I think the risk vs reward in this sector favors the bears.

Here is a chart of the S&P Utilities Sector Index rallying this year to get back up towards its early 2015 highs. Meanwhile, at the new all-time highs this month, momentum, as defined by a 14-week relative strength index, put in a lower high. This bearish divergence and failure to hold on to those all-time highs should be the catalyst to send share prices in utilities tumbling in the coming months: [Read more…]

We’ve been pretty neutral the majority of the U.S. Stock Market indexes over the past couple of weeks since they first starting hitting our upside targets. Some of them, like the Nasdaq100 and Mid-cap400 had yet to reach out upside objectives, but we are approaching those now. I will argue, though, that the developments we’ve seen are constructive, both in price behavior and in the breadth itself.

Here is what I think we need to keep in mind with each of the major Indexes. We’re using only bar charts today in order to put extra emphasis on price for this particular exercise: [Read more…]

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